Conversions with cart data is an extension to conversion tracking on your website. Using conversions with cart data you can provide the details of products sold for each transaction. By providing this additional information, you can understand your ads performance better and drive further optimizations. You can unlock advanced sales, profit reporting and insights for your Google Ads account and campaigns, such as number of orders, average cart size, revenue and gross profit. Advanced reporting based on conversions with cart data is currently supported for Performance Max, Shopping ads, and Search campaigns that are linked with a Google Merchant Center account. If you are already using Google Ads conversion tracking (GACT) or SA360 conversion tracking you can simply add the cart data to your existing conversions tag. If you don’t already have conversion tracking in place, you’ll need to set up conversion tracking first.
Key benefits
A click on an ad may lead to sale of products different than those actually featured. Implementing conversions with cart data enables you to view which items are purchased after your ads are clicked, and which items are your top sellers due to advertising. It also allows you to analyze cross-sell patterns and identify products that lead to bigger baskets or higher order values. Advertisers reporting conversions with cart data get:
- Clear measurement of revenue and profit generated by supported Google Ads campaigns
- Detailed reporting on items sold, cart size, and average order value
- Detailed reporting on cross-sell products (Shopping ads only)
Requirements
The reporting and insights based on sold products include all conversions that meet the requirements below:
- The conversions are biddable purchase conversions.
- The conversions are using Google tag or Google Tag Manager.
- SA360 conversions that are imported to the Google Ads account.
To unlock profit reporting, you’ll need to provide a value for the cost_of_goods_sold (COGS) attribute under “Price & availability” in the data specification for your Merchant Center product feed. Learn more about Cost of goods (COGS) [cost_of_goods_sold].
Learn how to Set up and test reporting conversions with cart data.
Unlock additional reporting metrics
When you submit cart data for your purchase conversions, Google Ads uses it to generate additional metrics and reports about your sales and sold products. Moreover, Google Ads combines the revenue from the sold items with their respective cost of goods sold (COGS) data that you provided in your Merchant Center feed, and uses it to generate additional metrics based on gross profit.
Cart conversion reports tell you what a customer bought after interacting with your ads. For example, assume you’re advertising a pair of shoes. From your regular performance reports, you know that a purchase conversion has been attributed to advertising these shoes. However, you don’t know whether that customer bought the same shoes you were advertising or if they bought another product. Cart conversion reports give you this information so you know exactly what the customer went on to buy.
To summarize, by reporting your cart data, you can unlock advanced performance reports and insights to help you better understand your actual sales performance, such as:
- How different bidding dimensions (device or geographic location, for example) affect cart size and average order value
- Whether or not users bought items other than those featured in the ads they clicked
- Whether or not users bought the items featured in the ads they clicked
- Which bidding entities (campaigns, ad groups, product or listing groups) drive product sales
- Which bidding entities deliver the highest gross profit
With more data, you are able to better optimize your campaigns and make more informed business decisions. For example, based on your cart reporting insights, you may choose to bid more aggressively on products that lead to bigger baskets.
Key metrics available with cart data reporting
Reporting metrics are available in your statistics tables at Campaigns, Ad Groups, and Products levels. The metrics that use cart data can be found under the “Conversions“ group of columns.
Attributed sales metrics
Attributed sales metrics measure the impact of a product as a lead generator. These metrics indicate whether the ad that featured the product results in sales of the product itself and/or leads to sales of other products. These metrics are calculated for all orders that are attributed to a click on an ad for a specific product. You can see these metrics in the Product groups page, Ad groups page, Campaigns page, and the Report Editor. These metrics include the following:
- Orders: Number of purchase conversions with cart data you received after ad interactions.
- Revenue: Total income from all transactions that are attributed to clicks on an ad. Revenue is calculated as the sum of the prices of all items in a cart minus any discount specified at the order level.
- Cost of goods sold (COGS): The total amount of business costs that are attributed to a certain product. This metric is only available if you provide the cost of goods sold (COGS).
- Gross profit: Total amount of profit from all transactions that are attributed to clicks on an ad. This metric is calculated as the difference between the revenue and the cost of goods sold. This metric is defined only for products that have the cost of goods sold (COGS).
- Gross profit margin: Calculated as ratio of gross profit to revenue and is expressed as percentage. This metric is defined only for products that have the cost of goods sold (COGS).
- Average order value: A metric that is calculated by dividing the revenue (total amount of income from all transactions) by the number of orders (transactions that result from clicks on ads).
- Average cart size: The average number of products in the order cart. This metric is calculated by taking the sum quantity of items in a cart and dividing it by the number of orders.
In addition, some metrics are available in both variants as lead (sale of the advertised product) and cross-sell (sale of advertising a different product):
- Cross-sell cost of goods sold
- Cross-sell gross profit
- Cross-sell revenue
- Cross-sell units sold
- Lead cost of goods sold
- Lead gross profit
- Lead revenue
- Lead units sold
Actual sales metrics
Actual sales metrics measure the actual products sold in orders. They can help you understand what people buy when they click on an ad. You can see these metrics in the Report Editor. In addition to all the metrics above, these metrics are available:
- Gross profit: The total amount of profit from a product. This metric is only available if you provide the
cost_of_goods_sold(COGS). Learn more about Cost of goods (COGS) [cost_of_goods_sold]. - Revenue: The total amount of revenue from a product.
- Units sold: The total count of sales of a product as a result of your advertising.
To save you time, CwCD offers several predefined reports that can answer specific questions about cart data.
Conversions with cart data for Search ads
Search ads aren’t associated with a specific product so you won’t see attributed sales metrics. However, actual sales metrics will be available for any products sold as a result of any clicks on your Search ads. The sold products are identified using the Merchant Center feed linked to the Google Ads account which ran the Search ads. You can link a Merchant Center feed to a Google Ads account even if it isn’t running Shopping or Performance Max ads.
Cross-device conversions support
To provide more complete reporting of metrics that use cart data, Google takes into account cross-device conversions. We use models based on aggregated and anonymous data from users who have previously signed into Google services. These models assign cross-device conversions that Google is unable to observe directly to metrics that use cart data. This approach allows us to provide reporting on cross-device behavior that combines observed and modeled conversions without compromising user privacy.
